the minor fall, the major lift
by WhenLighteningStrikes
Summary: She thinks she'd like to be loved like that.


**Title:** the minor fall, the major lift  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Spoilers: **Nothing serious, a little off course since I'd seen about ten episodes then.  
**Pairing**: Damon/Elena  
**Summary: **The snapshot of an almost relationship,  
**Author's Notes:** WHAT AM I DOING YOU GUYS? I've seen twenty-five episodes in total in FIVE days. And I have exams in two days, oh joy. But how much do I love them? Insanely much, like everything-will-be-right-in-the-world-if-they-just- get-together much. Title from _Hallelujah _by Leonard Cohen.

* * *

It hits her at the most ridiculous moment. He deliberately crashes into her in the middle of the kitchen (which he's not supposed to be in, in any case) and she feels her shoulder bang into muscle, and as he smirks down at her and pretends innocence, she thinks something like –oh. And then she thinks it's all very inconvenient. Which is the stupidest, most absurd thought in all the world and could someone just _please _erase the last few minutes from the melodrama that is her life?

-0-

She blames Bree ("he's good in the sack, inn' he?"). She blames Jenna ("he's ridiculously hot"). But mostly she blames those stupid romance novels with their stupid, dashing, evil lead male protagonists who're changed by the love of the damsel-in-distress female protagonist ("doesn't it always come down to the love of a woman?") She's not going to be that girl. He's not the fictional figment of someone's imagination, he murders people in cold blood and she hated him for it. Hates him for it. 'Hates'. As in present tense. Definitely very much present tense.

-0-

That night in Georgia she gets drunk. Like out-of-her mind, who-am-I, dancing-on-tables, philosophizing-about-the-purpose-of-life drunk. It's only the second time in her life, after the fiasco with Matt, but her boyfriend apparently only slept with her because she looks like his hundred-and-fifty year old ex, so she thinks she's entitled. He just looks on, and mentions something about how he won't even need compulsion, and that her getting drunk is like a monopoly 'get out of jail' free card to seduction. She ponders that for a moment, in between all the wonderings about universe and God and how her hair looks horrible in the lighting- "Have you ever wanted to kiss me because I look like Katherine?"  
He looks startled for a second, and she's pleased for some reason that her addled brain isn't going to search for, but then he's back to his 'man about town' smirk, "you're a girl, I would kiss you even if you didn't look like Katherine."  
Later, much later, when she's saved his life and her head's killing her, she thinks she might, just might have kissed him back if he'd tried. She was drunk enough for it. He didn't though.

-0-

He gets her a vibrator for a birthday. Stefan's at his throat in a second and he doesn't even fight back because he's too busy laughing at the expression on her face. And it's exactly like him- crude, embarrassing, and entirely too personal. And afterwards when he's sitting on her bed, waiting for all the Stefan-inflicted wounds to heal, he leans closer, his eyes half shut in that way they get when he's flirting and says he'd like to think of her making good use of his gift. She hits him on the arm then, hard, and pretends like it'll hurt him, pretends like she didn't just think about—just pretends.

-0-

She loves Stefan. She really, really does. And because she's seventeen, she's made hearts in her journal with their initials in it. And when he's around she doesn't- _can't_- think of anyone else. But these days she thinks about Damon more. He just falls in her thoughts when she's not paying attention, slips through the cracks when she's not guarding them. And mostly it's about how he's a completely annoying jackass and how much better her life would be if he wasn't in it and how he and Stefan couldn't possibly, actually be related. But sometimes she thinks about him and he's saying something to her in that way he always says things to her- with the half-amused hidden affection, and she thinks something like _maybe. _(Except that's probably 'maybe he's a Satan incarnate' or 'maybe he should be locked up'. And no one can prove otherwise, so there.)

-0-

She catches him staring at her sometime. Like he was just glancing and forgot to look away, and she knows it's because she looks so much like Katherine, and just for a second that's already passed, she's jealous. Fiercely jealous of this woman who's been trapped in a tomb for over a hundred years, whom she's never met, probably never will meet. And in that moment she thinks she'd like to be loved like that. With that half-wild desperation that he loves Katherine. Like he's always loved Katherine. She doesn't write that in her diary though.


End file.
